ABOUT US

Impact Index was accidentally created in March 2009 by Jaideep Varma for an exercise that culminated in a presentation at the ICC Centenary Conference at Oxford that same year. Since then, Impact Index has undergone a few transformations, developed an automated backend and been covered more in the media more than any other analytics system in cricket.

JAIDEEP VARMA’S

lifelong love for cricket and a growing disquiet with the way cricketers were being evaluated, over the last two decades particularly, led to the ideas that eventually formed Impact Index in 2009. As the main idea evolved and began holding up to all kinds of scrutiny, he decided to commit himself full-time to it to take it to its fullest potential. Otherwise, he has been a writer/filmmaker whose novel Local was published in 2005. He has also made five feature films – including Hulla (2008) and Leaving Home – the Life & Music of Indian Ocean (2010) – the latter opened the Indian Panorama at the International Film Festival of India at Goa, in November 2010. It also won the National Film Award. In Feb-March 2011, he also did a 30-episode video diary (with Gokul Chakravarthy) on the Cricket World Cup for Cricinfo called Running Between the Cricket. He is the chief custodian of Impact Index currently and the editor of this website.

SOHAM SARKHEL’S

initial belief of cracking it as a professional cricketer backfired miserably when he realised that his angular batting stance led to an increase of 463% when it came to his chances of getting bowled. The very same day he realised that quantifying such an anomaly was exceptional on his part and instead decided to dab his hands with numbers and cricket. After a Bachelors’ degree in Media & Communication from Symbiosis and particularly inspired by how the system viewed his two childhood heroes Sadagoppan Ramesh and Roger Twose, he has been working with Impact Index since 2012.

NIKHIL NARAIN

is an alumnus of St. Stephen’s College and the London School of Economics. He has worked at Citibank, on the Commonwealth Games team, Cricbuzz and Star Sports, which he left in order to fully utilise his educational skill-set of Mathematics and Statistics to help take the world’s only proper cricket analytics system to its next level. He hopes matching his training with his biggest passion will help in expressing himself to the fullest, something which his second-biggest passion (food) does not always.

MONTY DESAI

is a scout/ coach with 15 years experience and has been Consultant Coach with Rajasthan Royals (2008-2015) and Performance Coach at Gujarat Lions (2016) in the IPL. He has also worked with Andy Flower during England’s tour of India in 2008 and 2012 and been a coach in various capacities for Nepal and Canada. He is also Mentor Coach with Albert TUTI Patriots, who were champions of TNPL in 2016 and finalist in 2017. His vast T20 experience and sharp analytical skills are perfect fodder for the development of Impact Index’s T20 product for team consultancy.